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2001
China by Rail |
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| Late November, 2001, I bumped into Rupert at the Beijing Airport. I was there as a tourist; he was there on his 2001 China Book Tour promoting his novel Dust, Rainbows and Dirty Sox. I took a lot of pictures--he took a lot of notes but he wasn't very happy getting his picture taken. I recently recovered photos he had stolen from me. It's dawned on me that Rupert, having been a Baltimore Taxi driver, is a thief, as are most of the taxi drivers in Baltimore. "I can charge whatever I want!" they sing in a variety of dialects. Rupert told me he became disillusioned when he learned that the Public Service Commission that regulates the taxi industry didn't care or were on the take or something. Even the local papers wrote misleading articles that covered up or ignored the persistent problems of overcharging and incompetence. You would think that a City that relied so heavily on tourism and heavy drinking would watch out for the consumer. Capitalism is an omnivore and it eats the vulnerable and apathetic and the environment. Shareholders are pimps. Money is god. And there sure are a lot of religious people around. Even Communist China's got religion. Talk about your bloody capitalists. Jack, Rupert's Chinese interpreter, sent me the package of photographs along with a pile of loose papers and coasters: a collection of notes and doodles and undecipherable scribblings with dribbles instead of punctuation. It's going to take awhile for me to make sense of things, as if that ever happens, so there will be postings of photographs AND A TON OF VIDEO. In the meantime IN BETWEEN TIME When in THE USA AIN'T WE GOT GUNS. Somewhere in the middle speaks the voice of reason. |
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| Sullivan
Duda
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MORE TO COME |
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2001introChinaquick
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